The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 41

"Yes, but everybody knows who I belong to."

"Of course! Well, I guess you are not going to have any kind of belief in them now. They're planning to run our big stock train through the Bitter Creek bridge."

Hetty turned white. "They would never do that. Their leaders would not let them."

"No?" said Allonby. "I'm sorry to mention it, but it seems they have Larry's order."

A little flush crept into Flora Schuyler's face, but Hetty's grew still more colourless and her dark eyes glowed. Then she shook her shoulders, and said with a scornful quietness, "Larry would not have a hand in it to save his life. There is not a semblance of truth in that story, Chris."

Allonby glanced up in astonishment, but he was youthful, and that Hetty could have more than a casual interest in her old companion appeared improbable to him.

"It is quite a long time since you and Larry were on good terms, and no doubt he has changed," he said. "Any way, his friends are going to try giant powder on the bridge, and if we are fortunate Cheyne will get the whole of them, and Larry, too. Now, we'll change the topic, since it does not seem to please you."

He changed it several times, but his companions, though they sat and even smiled now and then, heard very few of his remarks.

"I'm going," he said at last, reproachfully. "I am sorry if I have bored you, but it is really quite difficult to talk to people who are thinking about another thing. It seems to me you are both in love with somebody, and it very clearly isn't me."

He moved away, and for a moment Hetty and Miss Schuyler did not look at one another. Then Hetty stood up.

"I should have screamed if he had stayed any longer," she said. "The thing is just too horrible--but it is quite certain Larry does not know. I have got to tell him somehow. Think, Flo."

XXIII

HETTY'S AVOWAL

The dusk Hetty had anxiously waited for was creeping across the prairie when she and Miss Schuyler pulled up their horses in the gloom of the birches where the trail wound down through the Cedar bluff. The weather had grown milder and great clouds rolled across the strip of sky between the branches overhead, while the narrow track amidst the whitened trunks was covered with loose snow. There was no frost, and Miss Schuyler felt unpleasantly clammy as she patted her horse, which moved restively now and then, and shook off the melting snow that dripped upon her; but Hetty seemed to notice nothing. She sat motionless in her saddle with the moisture glistening on her furs, and the thin white steam from the spume-flecked beast floating about her, staring up the trail, and when she turned and glanced over her shoulder her face showed white and drawn.

"He must be coming soon," she said, and Miss Schuyler noticed the strained evenness of her voice. "Yes, of course he's coming. It would be too horrible if we could not find him."

"Jake Cheyne and his cavalry boys would save the bridge," said Flora Schuyler, with a hopefulness she did not feel.

Hetty leaned forward and held up her hand, as though to demand silence that she might listen, before she answered her.

"There are some desperate men among the homestead-boys, and if they found out they had been given away they would cut the track in another place,"

she said. "If they didn't and Cheyne surprised them, they would fire on his troopers and Larry would be blamed for it. He would be chased everywhere with a price on his head, and anyone he wouldn't surrender to could shoot him. Flo, it is too hard to bear, and I'm afraid."

Her voice failed her, and Miss Schuyler, who could find no words to rea.s.sure her, was thankful that her attention was demanded by her restive horse. The strain was telling on her, too, and, with less at stake than her companion, she was consumed by a longing to defeat the schemes of the cattle-men, who had, it seemed to her with detestable cunning, decided not to warn the station agent, and let the great train go, that they might heap the more obloquy upon their enemies. The risk the engineer and brakesmen ran was apparently nothing to them, and she felt, as Hetty did, that Larry was the one man who could be depended on to avert bloodshed.

Yet there was still no sign of him.

"If he would only come!" she said.

There was no answer. Loose snow fell with a soft thud from the birch branches, and there was a little sighing amidst the trees. It was rapidly growing darker, but Hetty sat rigidly still in her saddle, with her hand clenched on the bridle. Five long minutes pa.s.sed. Then, she turned suddenly, exultation in her voice.

"Flo," she said, "he's coming!"

Miss Schuyler could hear nothing for another minute or two, and then, when a faint sound became audible through the whispering of the trees, she wondered how her companion could be sure it was the fall of hoofs, or that the horse was not ridden by a stranger. But there was no doubt in Hetty's face, and Flora Schuyler sighed as she saw it relax and a softness creep into the dark eyes. She had seen that look in the faces of other women and knew its meaning.

The beat of hoofs became unmistakable, and she could doubt no longer that a man was riding down the trail. He came into sight in another minute, a shadowy figure swinging to the stride of a big horse, with the line of a rifle-barrel across his saddle, and then, as he saw them, rode up at a gallop, scattering the snow.

"Hetty!" he said, a swift flush of pleasure sweeping his face, and Miss Schuyler set her lips as she noticed that he did not even see her.

Hetty gathered up her bridle, and wheeled her horse. "Ride into the bluff--quick," she said. "Somebody might see us in the trail."

Larry did as he was bidden, and when the gloom of the trees closed about them, sprang down and looped his bridle round a branch. Then, he stood by Hetty's stirrup, and the girl could see his face, white in the faint light the snow flung up. She turned her own away when she had looked down on it.

"I have had an anxious day, but this makes up for everything," he said.

"Now--and it is so long since I have seen you--can't we, for just a few minutes, forget our troubles?"

He held out his hand, as though to lift her down, but the girl turned her eyes on him and what he saw in them checked him suddenly.

"No," she said, with a tremor in her voice, "we can't get away from them.

You must not ask any question until you have heard everything!"

She spoke with a swift conciseness that omitted no point and made the story plain, for there was a high spirit in the girl, and a tangible peril that could be grappled with had a bracing effect on her. Grant's face grew intent as he listened, and Hetty, looking down, could see the firmer set of his lips, and the glint in his eyes. The weariness faded out of it, and once more she recognized the alert, resourceful, and quietly resolute Larry she had known before the troubles came. He turned swiftly and clasped her hand.

"I wonder if you know how much you have done for me?"

Hetty smiled and allowed her fingers to remain in his grasp. "Then, you have heard nothing of this?" she said.

"No," said the man. "But Hetty----"

Again the girl checked him with a gesture. "And I need not ask you whether you would have had a hand in it?"

Grant laughed a little scornful laugh that was more eloquent than many protestations. "No," he said, "you needn't. I think you know me better than that, Hetty?"

"Yes," said the girl softly. "You couldn't have had anything to do with that kind of meanness. Larry, how was it they did not tell you?"

She felt the grasp of the man's fingers slacken and saw his arm fall to his side. His face changed suddenly, growing stern and set, until he turned his head away. When he looked round again the weariness was once more plain in it, and she almost fancied he had checked a groan.

"You have brought me back to myself," he said. "Only a few seconds ago I could think of nothing but what you had done for me. I think I was almost as happy as a man could be, and now----"

Hetty laid her hand on his shoulder. "And now? Tell me, Larry."

"No," said the man. "You have plenty of troubles of your own."

The grasp of the little hand grew tighter, and when Grant looked up he saw the girl smiling down on him half-shyly, and yet, as it were, imperiously.

"Tell me, dear," she said.

Larry felt his heart throb, and his resolution failed him. He could see the girl's eyes, and their compelling tenderness.

"Well," he said, huskily, "what I have dreaded has come. The men I have given up everything for have turned against me. No, you must not think I am sorry for what I have done, and it was right then; but they have listened to some of the crazy fools from Europe and are letting loose anarchy. I and the others--the sensible Americans--have lost our hold on them, and yet it was we who brought them in. We took on too big a contract--and I'm most horribly afraid, Hetty."

The light had almost gone, but his face still showed drawn and white and Hetty bent down nearer him.